Last week I went to lunch and was wrung up by a young person with multi-colored hair and piercings in their nose. I’d seen this person the last time I’d been to this particular restaurant a few weeks prior and had said as I left at that time that I liked their hair, which elicited an enthusiastic response of "Thanks!"
This time, though, as I was being wrung up, it was the young person who noticed my, how shall we say, uniform. I was dressed in all black, wearing my color, along with a pectoral cross with a rainbow cord, which I got many years ago when I went through a Cursillo weekend.
This person said, “I like your…uh…necklace?”
It was tucked into my shirt, so I said, “There’s a cross at the end. I’m wearing it all month.”
The person smiled and asked, “Are you a…uh…what’s the word?”
“A priest?” I interjected.
“That’s it!”
“Yes I am.”
They smiled again and said, “You might be the coolest one because most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty mean to folks like me.”
“Well,” I said, as I was handed my lunch, “Jesus isn’t.” And the person smiled, wished me a good day, and we both went our separate ways.
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And that, my friends, is why I have made being out in public and having lunch in my collar an important part of my ministry ever since I got ordained. Wearing the uniform isn’t about me. It’s not about drawing attention to myself, though I admit that that does happen. It’s about being a visible, living symbol for others, especially those who have been mistreated by priests and pastors and other church folks. The Lord alone knows if folks like the person I talked with that day will ever darken the door of a church building, but that isn’t the point. Just letting someone else know the steadfast love and mercy and goodness of God are what it’s about. Our readings from this past Sunday make that pretty clear.
'As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”'
--Matthew 9: 9-13
After a long break during Lent and Easter, we are back in the Gospel of Matthew for the foreseeable future, and this week we find Jesus engaging with a group of folks over diner. The great thing about a meal is that you can’t really ignore folks when you’re sharing eating together, which is in part why Jesus does so much of his ministry in the context of meals. Another reason is because sharing meals, having dinner parties and the like, was an essential part of life in 1st century Palestine. Who you shared your table with communicated something about who you were in the society. The Pharisees gathered there – the sticklers for the rules who were the important folks– were shocked that Jesus was eating with those who were ridiculed, shunned, and marginalized. These included tax collectors, who were Jewish folks that worked in collaboration with the Romans and often charged more than was required. They were seen as traitors and despised, and not only had Jesus just called one of them – Matthew – to follow him, but now he’s having dinner with several of them and other so-called “notorious sinners.” This doesn’t sit well with the big deal folks.
And so when they push back against Jesus he uses an allegory. A physician doesn’t treat a person who is well, right? And so it is with Jesus. He has come to minister to and among those who are sick, both literally and those sick in their spirits and hearts. And then he gives them a command to go and learn what is meant by the saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
In case you didn’t catch it, Jesus is quoting here from the prophet Hosea, which was the Old Testament reading assigned with this Gospel on Sunday:
'Thus says the Lord: “I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will beg my favor: ‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.’ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”'
--Hosea 5: 15-6: 6
Jesus quotes the final line of this pericope from Hosea, though in the Bible used in our parish, the line reads a bit different - "I desire steadfast love, and not sacrifice." This is one of those times when translations get confusing. In the original Hebrew, Hosea uses the word hesed , which doesn’t really have a direct English translation – or Greek, for that matter. Hesed is a kind of justice for the poor and marginalized, God’s merciful love rolled down like a waterfall over the whole world. Hosea was preaching in a prosperous time, when those in power had forgotten the poor, the widows, the orphans, the migrants in their land, and he preached the truth to those in power that God’s hesed would be poured out. When the Book of Hosea was translated from Hebrew to Greek, hesed became eleos, the Greek word for mercy and compassion. This is the word Jesus uses when he quotes from Hosea. Our New Revised Standard Version of the Gospel translates eleos to “mercy.” Though the NRSV chooses to say “steadfast love” in the Hosea reading and “mercy” in the Gospel, the Greek is the same – eleos – in both and hearkens back to that Hebrew word hesed and justice, grounded in compassion, steadfast love, and mercy.
This is God’s desire. This is about caring for and being with people in greatest need, not just doing what is obligated by tradition or law. Jesus spent a lot of time with folks who were just trying to follow the rules. They were thinking more with their heads than their hearts. They did what the Law commanded them – they offered the appointed sacrifices, went to worship at the right times, and sang the songs they were supposed to sing – but their hearts weren’t in the right place. Like the rulers to whom Hosea preached, they’d forgotten about people, about God’s most basic and fundamental commandment to love others as themselves.
I see a lot of Christians today - or, at least, people who claim to be Christians - who think they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, what their traditions and laws would oblige them to do. They go to church on Sunday and read the right stories and sing the right songs because that’s what is expected. And they try to get folks to join their churches in order to add to the Kingdom. They quote the Bible to others with a kind of snobbery with which the religious fundamentalists of Jesus’ time quoted the Law. Their rigidity has not only driven folks away from Christianity in droves, but it has caused irreparable harm.
Lawmakers across this country – many heretically invoking the name of Jesus – are denying life-saving care for kids, demonizing people who use art and humor to transform pain into joy, and undoing decades of work toward equality, all because they think it’s what God desires. It’s the exact same pattern to which both Hosea and Jesus witnessed – misguided duty to religious laws that forgets the basic dignity of all people, placing “sacrifice”and obedience above steadfast love and mercy.
There is a hurting world out there that loves Jesus but won’t go anywhere near a church or a preacher because they’ve been told by such folks Jesus doesn’t love them' at least, not the way they currently are. And if the Church doesn’t make it our mission to get out of our walls and go show people – more so than just tell them – that Jesus only desires love, mercy, compassion, that they are made in his most beautiful and fabulous image, and that he loves them just the way they are, then who will?! When people’s lives are at stake, the cry for hesed and eleos, for steadfast love and mercy is needed everywhere, from a sandwich shop in Asheboro, North Carolina to the government halls of Uganda.
As a priest who values wearing my color and my rainbow cross in public, I am drawn into these kinds of conversations whether I like it or not. It’s my chance to witness to the Good News, to be an evangelist in the truest sense. It’s harder when we don’t wear collars, or the cross around our necks and on our fingers are not easily seen, but we’re all meant to let our lives be, as our Orthodox friends put it, “living icons” of our faith. If we dare to own our faith in such public fashion as to wear the cross – a symbol of shame turned into one of hope – then we can and must honor the message of the one who died on it. Meet every person with steadfast love, the kind that reminds them that they are loved for who they are, not in spite of it. Show the level of compassion and mercy that Jesus himself showed, not for the sake of increasing the number of folks on a Sunday, but decreasing the number of folks who may harm themselves because they can’t take being mocked and shamed and abused anymore.
The whole Church must accept this solemn and holy responsibility because, the truth is , not everyone sees a collar or a pectoral cross and thinks they are safe. Y’all - the laity - go places we clergy can’t go. Y’all have a message that can be heard louder and clearer than ours. The call to embody hesed and eleos, steadfast love and mercy, is a call issued to every single one of us in every corner of our lives. Wherever the road takes us, may we go from here and learn what Jesus means by mercy, not sacrifice, and live our lives as though we really believe it.
